Friday, October 14, 2011

The little-book-that-could has been nominated as a finalist for the National Book Award. I never thought this would happen. I actually thought that I'd spend the rest of my writing days sending my book-children out into the world to be admired by a few, scorned by a dozen, and muttering to myself in this Blogger corner.

Whenever I speak to audiences about my fiction, inevitably I'm asked about rejection. How many times did you face rejection, they ask. And I tell them: many times. My first novel was dead in the water for 3 years, three years of submission and rejection, and I had exactly one story published during that time. I was working at the University of New Orleans during the years following Hurricane Katrina. Driving through New Orleans East for work, through that wasted landscape, the houses rotting and spray-painted, the empty streets, the waste from the flood still sitting where the water deposited it when it receded subdued me so thoroughly I didn't write a new sentence for 3 years. Fine, I thought, I'll shut up now. I told despair: You win. I began looking up the pre-requisite courses I'd need to enter a nursing program, began plotting my return to school, my leave from writing.

And then Doug Siebold of Agate Publishing said yes to Where the Line Bleeds. Two years later, my editor at Bloomsbury Publishing said yes to my second novel Salvage the Bones. And now, the folks at the National Book Foundation have said yes.

So many can tell you no, I tell my audience, but you only need one person to say yes.

29
comments:

I don't Google people I know (and *like*) . . . but I do Google "celebrities", so look whose blog I (finally) discovered? ;-)

Big Time KUDOS & CONGRATS, Jesmyn! I'm on a *wait-list*, I'll have you know, at the Sacramento Library (but do tell me when you next swing out Califor-ni-ay way for a book signing, etc, and I will dig into my meager funds to purchase a copy!)

Seriously Jes, all deserved best wishes on your accomplishment. Your friends at the T-Wall bask in your reflected glory!

I heard you interviewed and then heard you read an excerpt on The Writer's Block podcast and I was so excited to jump on the B&N website to order the book, but then I was also a little disappointed that there was no audio version available. I am a "real book" person, I don't automatically go for the audio versions, but this time I wanted both! Your voice reading your work the way that you meant it to sound was wonderful. I guess at least now I can imagine you reading it to me! Best of luck on the award!

Congratulations on winning the National Book Award! I'm a writer and reader from Mississippi and I am proud of your success! I'm rushing out to my independent bookseller today to buy Salvage the Bones.

I finished Salvage the Bones the other night and was just blown away by it. What a beautiful book. I new it was going to be a magical experience when I came across your description of the black spots on the puppys belly like scattered watermelon seeds. Thank you so much for such an incredible experience, and congratulations on a much deserved award.

This. Right here. "I actually thought that I'd spend the rest of my writing days sending my book-children out into the world to be admired by a few, scorned by a dozen, and muttering to myself in this Blogger corner."

That possibility wasn't enough to stop you from writing, which says a lot. I'm not sure if I love writing enough for its own sake, to take a similar risk. So maybe I should stop. I just read Michael Caine's words about acting: "If you can imagine yourself doing anything else, forget it!" Time to soul-search.

As an old nurse, and an avid reader, I say, thank god you stayed with writing! I've never read a better book than Salvage the Bones. You have a unique writing style that is completely awe-inspiring (and you don't write trite phrases like that either!) A talent like yours deserves every award going. Please keep writing. And congrats on a GREAT book. I doubt if I will ever forget Esch and her family.Sally McDonald

Dear Jesmyn, I want to thank you for writing the amazing "Salvage the Bones." I became absorbed in the world of Eshe and her family and missed them when the book ended. Soon after, I wrote a song and called it "A Guy Like That," and didn't realize until about a week later that your book, and especially Eshe, had inspired it. I entered the song in a contest at Rapunzel's Coffee and Books in Lovingston, VA and was selected as a finalist. (I didn't win, but enjoyed sharing it.) Thought you might like to know. Keep writing! With a smile~mary Binda upforjoy@gmail.com

Me in a Book

In the haziness of the alcohol Meme thought with pleasure about the scandal that would have taken place if she were to express her thoughts at that moment, and the intimate satisfaction of her roguishness was so intense that Fernanda noticed it. --Gabriel Garcia Marquez: One Hundred Years of Solitude

What I've Been Working on in my Lonely Rooms (or we got it for cheap)

My third book is a memoir titled Men We Reaped (Bloomsbury). It's about me and my family and five young men from my small community who died from 2000-2004. Writing it broke my heart, over and over again, but it's a story you need to read. You need to know how we're living and dying here. You need to know. So go read.

My second novel, Salvage the Bones (Bloomsbury) is a novel that follows a teenage girl, Esch, and her family during the ten days preceding Hurricane Katrina and during the immediate aftermath of the storm. Here in these Mississippi coastal backwoods, there are motherless children, beautiful pit bulls, lost girls, boys who ride bikes without seats, fights in basketball gyms, births, deaths, and more. Sit with me on the lip of this ditch. Come on: let me tell you a story.

Salvage the Bones won the National Book Award and the ALEX Award, was a finalist for the IMPAC Dublin Award and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Fiction, and was a finalist for the Young Lions Award.

My debut novel, Where the Line Bleeds (Agate Bolden) is available now on Amazon.com, or you can find it at your local bookstore. Essence magazine chose the novel to be an Essence Magazine Book Club Selection, and the Black Caucus of the American Library Association chose it as a 2009 Honor Award recipient. It was also an honorable mention for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Fiction, and a finalist for the VCU/Cabell First Novelist Award.

I've also published stories, essays, and excerpts in the Oxford American, BOMB magazine, A Public Space, Electric Literature, and Oxford American.

I'm a former Stegner Fellow (Stanford University). I was the Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi. Now I'm an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of South Alabama.